PROGRAM INFORMATION

GEORGETOWN - 7/24/2009 to 4/8/2010

 CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Nate Davis, Todd MacDonald, Eric Rasbach, Derrick Benallie, Nick Wagner, Jake Renquist, and Mike Kostrzewa (taking picture).

DATA DETAILS

July 24, 2009 to April 8, 2010:

The anemometer tower was installed on July 24, 2009 and removed on April 8, 2010. The site is just below and on the north end of Georgetown Reservoir in Clear Creek County. It is easily seen from I-70. The site is in a valley so that winds are expected from the south down the valley.

All data was collected using an NRG #40 anemometer and NRG #200 Wind Vane mounted on a tilt-up tower located at a height of 20m.

This equipment fed into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs were sent to the Colorado ALP at Colorado State University for analysis. The data plug files and text versions of these files are given below.

It is important to note that these are the raw files without any compensation for offset. It is also important to note that the temperature was not recorded during this period.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.45. For this data an offset of +147° was applied to the wind vane data. For this report, a validation analysis was performed on the data. This data was filtered two ways:

1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 mph for 3 hours or more was deleted.
2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees over 6 hours was deleted

Windographer was then used to add in synthetic data to these intervals with suspect data. The combined data files (with and without the validation analysis), and the Windographer files (with and without the validation analysis) are given below:

• Georgetown_0539_2009_0724_to_2010_0408_without_data_validation.txt
• Georgetown_0539_2009_0724_to_2010_0408_without_data_validation.windog
• Georgetown_0539_2009_0724_to_2010_0408_with_data_validation_offset_147.txt
• Georgetown_0539_2009_0724_to_2010_0408_with_data_validation_offset_147.windog

Final Wind Resource Summary

The anemometer tower was removed from the site on April 8, 2010. Highlights of the wind resource at this site for the entire monitoring period are shown below:

Windographer was used to match up the wind at this site with the performance curves of some common turbines of various sizes and various heights. The table below shows the results. For the larger turbines, the tower height was increased to account for the larger turbine blades - the wind resource was extrapolated to these higher heights. Keep in mind that the larger and the higher the turbine, the better the wind and the greater the output. But of course, as the tower heights and turbine sizes increase so does the cost.

IMPORTANT: No turbine losses are included in the power, energy, and capacity factor values in the table. Typically, turbine losses can be 5-20% to account for maintenance downtime, icing/soiling and losses from other turbines in a wind farm. Users wanting to be conservative in the performance projections should multiply the power, energy, and capacity values by (1- % losses) to account for these losses.

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